THE NEW YORKER manner, but the violas, not the cellos, now take the foreground on the con- ductor's right. Risers have been added to the platform, and down both sides there are new reflecting screens. Avery Fisher Hall is not a lovable audito- rium, but perhaps Mr. Masur will make it seem one. Dvorák's hundred- and-fiftieth birthday, last month, passed almost unmarked in this city; this week, however, Mr. Masur conducts the "N ew World." Leonard Slatkin took over for the second Philharmonic bill. It began with Haydn's Symphony No. 60, "II Distratto," of which he led a poised, elegant, entertaining performance. Two First Symphonies followed, those of Samuel Barber (completed in 1936, when its composer was twenty-five) and of William Walton (completed in 1935, when its composer was thirty-three). Each in its day was highly acclaimed; neither, I thought, has lasted well. I know the Walton work better. Mr. Slat- kin's advocacy was earnest and ener- getic, but he pulled out the big stops too soon: when he reached the huge cli- maxes, there was nothing left to add. B ARBER and Walton in maturity wrote old-fashioned romantic grand operas that had rather similar fates. Walton's "T roilus and Cressida" appeared at Covent Garden in 1954, had a brief international career (San Francisco, the New York City Opera, La Scala), and after years of neglect was revised and revived (at Covent Garden in 1976) and recorded. Barber's "Antony and Cleopatra" was com- posed for the opening of the new Met, in 1966, where, by all accounts, it sank beneath the weight of a monster pro- duction by Franco Zeffirelli (who was also the librettist). Revised, and slimmed and trimmed with the help of Gian Carlo Menotti, it reappeared at the J uilliard (1975) and at the Spoleto Festival (1983) and was recorded. Both works at their premières were quite warmly received by the publi'c and, for the most part, panned by the press. Barber, wounded by the lack of appre- ciation, composed little more in his remaining fourteen years. Walton was wounded, too, but went on to compose some substantial orchestral works. Three years before "T roilus," "The Rake's Progress" had appeared. The year before "Antony," Bernd Alois Zim- mermann's "Die Soldaten" (which the City Opera presented last week) had r , \_\ /r.: / I 111 --. 1/ L I ! vc "Don't worry, Howard. The hig questions are multiple choice." . h d ..... " W k " h d a Its premIere. ozzec a ap- peared in 1925, "Lulu" in 1937. "T roilus" and "Antony" were stale grand-opera confections modelled after Tchaikovsky and Strauss. But both have found champions, and last month the Lyric Opera of Chicago revived "Antony" in an excellent performance. It was the second installment in the plan of Ardis Krainik, the Lyric's dynamic director, to present at least one American opera each season. Last year's was Dominick Argento's "Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe"; next year's will be a new opera, William Bolcom's "McTeague." The Cleopatra was Catherine Mal- fitano, an American soprano at the peak of her powers; she was gleaming and alluring of presence, secure and subtle in every utterance. The Antony, Richard Cowan, was loud and confi- dent but somewhat pushy, unpoetic. In the revised version, the other roles- Jacque Trussel was Caesar, Eric Half- varson was Enobarbus-are scarcely more than supporting; all of them were well taken. Elijah Moshinsky's stag- ing was trim and precise (except when he allowed Enobarbus' "The barge she sat in" aria to excite near-nude sol- diery to a steam-bath orgy). In Michael Yeargan's décor-a magic kaleido- scope of angled mirrors wherein single painted panels were multiplied into deep scenes-and under Duane Schuler's lights, sultry, sun-drenched Egypt could . melt into masonried Rome. Richard Buckley conducted warmly and securely. The case for a continuance of "Antony" could hardly have been better put. But thumbs down: the music holds little interest for a modern listener, and a tragedy is trivialized. T HE next day, in San Francisco, I heard Prokofiev's "War and Peace" -an opera still vibrantly alive, one whose stature Ís growing with each new production. In Kobbé, Lord Harewood calls it "more or less indis- tinguishable from a masterpiece," and adds that his opinion is "strengthened with each revivaL" Last year, Seattle staged "War and Peace"; this year, before San Francisco, there was a Kirov co-production with the BBC, Covent Garden, the Bastille, and Philips Classics. Although the Met has been laggard, its theatre has housed produc- tions from the Bolshoi and the English National on tour. The making of the opera was long (1941-52) and troubled, subject to official interference: it went through version after version, and Prokofiev never heard a performance of all that he had composed. Yet in the San Francisco program book Richard T aruskin writes of "a perfection of f " dd . b h . ". orm -a lng, to e sure, t at It IS perhaps more readily perceived intu- itively, as it is by audiences the world over, than by those exigent enforcers